by Karen Rose
He was big, the firefighter—at least three inches taller than Barlow who was at least six feet tall himself. The bright CSU spotlights shone on a face grimy and streaked with sweat, but no amount of dirt could change the fact that he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Or could ever hope to see again. Goddamn him for that alone.
Of course he’d been on duty tonight. Of course he’d been the firefighter to find the victim, to try to save her, to be smart enough to keep key evidence intact.
Of course he was the one man she hadn’t wanted to see, tonight or any other night. Because he’d gone to great lengths to keep from seeing her. Seven months. He’d moved to Minneapolis seven months ago, but there hadn’t been a single phone call or e-mail. For months she’d wondered why he’d come here. Now she didn’t care.
She steeled her spine. Summoning a tone she hoped to hell sounded casually friendly, she stepped forward. “David Hunter. Long time, no see. How are you?”
For a moment, David’s smooth gait seemed to hitch, but when he spoke he sounded only mildly surprised. “Olivia. Good to see you.”
Barlow’s brows lifted and Olivia didn’t even need to look at Kane to know his had done the same. “You know each other?” Barlow asked.
“We have mutual friends,” Olivia said with a calmness that was a complete facade. Her heart was pounding so hard it was all she could hear, just as it had every other time she’d seen him. None of which had obviously meant anything to him. None of which mattered right now. “Kane, you remember Mr. Hunter? He’s Eve’s friend.”
And Eve was Olivia’s friend. It was Eve who’d told her that David had decided to move to the Twin Cities. Eve who’d told her David got a job with the fire department. And Eve who had ceased giving updates because it was obvious Olivia no longer cared.
“Of course I remember,” Kane said, cautiously, Olivia thought. “How’s the arm?”
The arm that had fractured seven months before when Pit-Guy forced David off the road, thinking it was Eve driving the car. He’d been in the hospital, one of the last times Olivia had seen him. David raised his arm, rotating it a few times. “Good as new. Thanks.”
Enough of this. “Sergeant Barlow said you found the girl,” she said, more curtly than she’d intended.
David flinched, his throat working as he swallowed hard. “We were too late. She was already dead.”
And that hurt him, it was easy to see. Against her better judgment, Olivia met his gray eyes and saw the raw misery there, and her pounding heart hurt for him. She saw death every day. Luckily, he did not. “There wasn’t anything you could do, David,” she murmured. “She wasn’t supposed to be in there. Nobody was, right?”
For just a moment, there was a connection. The connection. The same one she’d felt that one night he’d made her forget… nearly everything. For a moment he wasn’t David Hunter, tall, dark, Greek god who made women everywhere melt into puddles of goo. He was the man who’d had a truly beautiful soul and who, for a few short hours, showed it to me. But as she watched, his eyes shuttered, pushing her away once again.
“That’s right,” he said quietly. “But she was in there, for whatever reason. I looked for an ID, a purse, a backpack, but didn’t see anything. It’s pretty dark, though. You might find something on one of the other floors come daybreak.”
Barlow was looking back and forth between the two of them avidly and to her consternation, Olivia realized she’d been staring up into David’s face like a love-struck teenager. But then, every woman stared at David Hunter’s face like a love-struck teenager, so nobody would think her any different. Because I wasn’t.
“When can we go up to check the scene?” she asked, a chill in her voice.
“You can’t tonight,” Barlow said. “Part of the fourth floor collapsed. It’s not safe. You’ll need to wait until the structure can be reinforced before going up to where they found her. But they did bring something out you’ll want to see. David?”
“It was on the floor next to where I found her.” He held out his gloved right hand. On it rested a glass ball, about the size of Olivia’s clenched fist. It was covered in something shiny and gelatinous.
Olivia frowned. “You disturbed the scene?” she asked sharply.
“Hunter was on the floor when it collapsed,” Barlow said quietly and her eyes involuntarily flickered up to David’s in alarm. “That you have this evidence at all is due to his quick thinking.”
“We were fine,” David said. “The ball was about to slide into the hole in the floor. My adrenaline was pumping and I grabbed it by reflex but then couldn’t put it back where I found it. The area doesn’t exist anymore.”
She forced her muscles to relax. The thought of him crashing through a fourth-story floor had her own adrenaline pumping. “Is this the gel we found on the girl’s hands?”
“Likely,” Barlow said. “The lab will confirm it.”
Kane leaned over her shoulder to study the glass globe. “Why the gel?”
“I guess that’s for you to find out,” David said.
Olivia turned to find Micki, startled when she found the CSU leader standing inches behind her. “Can you bag it, Mick?”
Micki’s gaze shifted from the globe to Olivia’s face knowingly. “Absolutely.”
“Take his glove, too, just in case we need to check for residue. Do you have another glove?” she asked David, this time schooling her glance to remain impersonal.
“I’ve got extras on the truck. If you’re done with me, I’ve still got work to do.”
If you’re done with me… No, she didn’t think she ever would have been. Not that it mattered one iota. He’d been done with her after one night. What an idiot I was.
Olivia made herself look at him, made her smile as impersonal as her glance had been. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions. Kane, we need to inform Mr. Weems’s widow before she sees it on the news. Anything else we need here?”
Kane shook his head. “Not until we can get inside. You have our cells, Barlow?”
Barlow nodded. “I do. I’ll call you as soon as it’s safe.”
Micki bagged the glass globe and now tugged at the glove on David’s hand. “I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can,” she said, dropping the glove in a paper sack.
“Not a problem,” David said and without another word, turned and was around the building and gone from sight when Olivia realized she’d been holding her breath.
Hell. “Micki, can you run the dead girl’s prints? Watch for anything that pops from Florida. She’s got Gator nail art. Call us when you get a match on the gel. Thanks.”
“As the man said, not a problem,” Micki responded evenly, but Olivia knew that look in her friend’s eyes. She’d expect an explanation.
As if I have one. “Abbott’s going to want us in his office at oh-eight in the morning,” Olivia said, changing the subject. Her captain was big on meetings starting at oh-eight.
“Looking forward to it,” was all Micki said. “I’ll try to run the girl’s prints before then. Afterward, we can grab a coffee. Catch up.”
“You bet,” Olivia said flatly, then turned to Micah Barlow who was watching her too closely and she felt a flare of temper. That she’d even considered David Hunter for a nanosecond was partially Barlow’s fault, goddamn meddling bastard. “He’ll want you there, too,” she said coolly. “You know where to find Abbott’s office?”
“I’ve worked with your captain before,” Barlow said. “I’ll be there.”
She jerked a nod, then headed to her car, Kane at her side. He didn’t say a word until she’d unlocked her car door.
Leaning against her hood, he folded his arms across his chest. “And that was…?”
She jerked open her door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Kane pushed her door closed with the palm of his hand. “Olivia.”
She sighed. “One mammoth mistake, okay? One I don’t care to repeat or discuss.”
“No, you did it last time. It’s my turn to break the news.” Unlike other detective teams, they never flipped a coin. They split the nasty duties fifty-fifty. It had always been that way, even when she was totally green and he was her mentor. “I’ll meet you there.”
She opened her door when Kane walked away, then stopped, suddenly uneasy. Looking over her shoulder, she saw David standing next to his truck, watching her, and a shudder rippled across her skin. For a moment their eyes locked, then his chin tilted as if issuing a challenge. He pulled a new glove on his hand, then turned back to his work.
Trembling, Olivia got in her car. I don’t need this. Not now.
He’s had seven months. Seven fucking months to say something. Do something. She’d waited, patiently at first. Then the hurt started to rise, higher, deeper with each passing day. Each passing week. Until she’d given up. I’ve given him enough time. It had been two and a half years since the night they’d met at her sister’s wedding in Chicago. Since the night they’d… Dammit. Remembering wasn’t supposed to make her want it again. But it did. Which made her pathetic. He’s had two and a half years to do something.
Maybe he’s waiting for you to make the first move.
And maybe you’re the biggest idiot on earth. She knew for whom David waited. And it sure as hell’s not me. Cursing herself for even entertaining the notion someone like him could be waiting for her, she followed Kane, ignoring the reporters’ questions. There would be a press conference soon enough. She was about to inform Mrs. Henry Weems that she’d become a widow, that her life had been irrevocably changed.
As she drove, she rehearsed the words that four years in Homicide had not made any easier to say.
David could hear nothing over the low roar of the truck beside him as he pulled a pike pole from its compartment, but he knew when her car pulled away. Turning, he watched her taillights disappear through the construction gate.
She’d been tired tonight. Worried. And not happy to see me. Irritation had filled those round blue eyes of hers. But there had been more. Compassion, concern. And then shame. The shame scraped at him as he knew he’d put it there.
But most of all, he’d seen the bone-weariness that weighed so heavily on her slender shoulders. He’d been watching her closely enough over the last seven months to know it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse.
The call had pulled her from sleep. The mental picture was a distracting one. She’d forgone her usual neat French braid, instead pulling her blond hair into a ponytail so severely tight that he’d gotten a headache just looking at it. When she wasn’t working, she let her hair fall loosely around her shoulders and he had a vague recollection of how it felt between his fingers.
He swallowed hard. He had a vague recollection about a lot of things, none of which he had any business thinking about right now.
How many times in the last seven months had he almost knocked on her door? Too many. He’d about given up waiting for her to come to him. And then tonight, here she was. She’d felt it, whatever it was between them. He’d seen it in her eyes. So he’d wait a little bit longer.
How much longer? How much longer before you either fish or cut bait?
“So?” said a voice behind him.
David whipped around and Micah Barlow jumped backward, his eyes focused on the pike pole David clutched in his hand. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Barlow,” he gritted between clenched teeth, then made himself relax. “What do you need?”
Micah’s gaze flicked from the pole to the gate the uniformed guard had just pulled closed behind Olivia’s car, then back to his face. “She really doesn’t like you. Why?”
David felt his face heat. “That’s none of your business.”
Micah frowned. “Yeah, it kind of is. But we’ll deal with that later. For now, I want you to walk me through exactly what happened tonight, from the minute you got here until the minute you walked out of the building with that damn jelly ball in your hand.”
Annoyance spurted and with it the desire to tell Micah to stay the hell away from Olivia Sutherland. But it’s not my business either. Not yet anyway. If he had his way, that would change, very soon. For now, he’d do his job.
“It wasn’t a jelly ball,” he said. “The ball was solid glass. It was just covered in gel.”
“That’s a start. So take me through it, step by step.”
Monday, September 20, 2:00 a.m.
He flipped on the tube and sat back in his easy chair, nursing the beer he allowed himself after snagging a new “client.” Tonight he’d earned the whole six-pack, but he never allowed himself more than one. Drunk men made stupid mistakes. He should know. The stupid mistakes of drunk men accounted for a good portion of his business.
Remote in hand, he viewed the DVD he’d burned, smiling as smoke filled the screen. Every word the quartet had spoken was discernible. Some parts were louder than others, but the audio was crisp because his equipment was top-of-the-line. Skimping on equipment was bad economy in the long run.
And I plan for the long run. He looked around his small apartment. It was stark, utilitarian. But eventually his bank accounts would plump enough for him to buy an island villa staffed with discreet servants. He already knew which villa he’d choose. It was currently owned by a wealthy politician with a very nasty proclivity toward underage youths. The politician actually believed he’d be free when he’d finished depositing his blackmail payments into an offshore account in small, monthly installments.
His marks always believed they’d be free. That I’ll be satisfied and go away. But he never went away. He just quietly raised the price, and his marks always paid.
Because he chose his marks wisely, just as he’d done tonight. These four had parents who’d be willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep their darlings from going to prison. And prison was exactly where they’d go. They’d been very naughty, setting a bad fire. Two people were dead. Of course the guard belonged to him, but he was quite willing to give the College Four the credit. They’d walked away from a screaming teen, left her to die. The cops would have no trouble believing they’d shoot a guard, too.
Eyes on his TV screen, he watched, wincing when the burly Albert smacked the whiny Joel with his club. Ouch. He bet Joel had a hell of a headache right now.
He wondered if they’d started to turn on each other yet. They would, eventually, when the reality of what they’d done permeated the shock. There was art in the timing of his initial contact. He wanted to let them stew long enough to be terrified of capture, but not so long that they did anything stupid. Like confess. Especially Joel the Whiny.
Of course if he became too big a liability, Joel could be taken care of.
He rewound back to the point where Eric the Brain gave Albert the Muscle the order to smack Joel upside the head. There was a coolness to Eric, a willingness to do what was necessary that could become quite an asset.
Because I’ve been thinking. His investments had taken a beating in the stock market collapse. At the rate he was going, he’d hit forty before he rebuilt his portfolio enough to support the lifestyle he’d been planning. He didn’t plan to wait anywhere near that long. He wanted to be young enough to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
For a long time he’d been thinking of hiring on. Expanding. But who to trust?
He’d been in the business long enough to know that a man was only as trustworthy as the length of rope tied around his neck. This was equally true for women. Hell, especially for women. The rope had to be kept short, the knot too strong to slither from. He watched Albert and Eric carry the unconscious Joel away, Mary trailing behind. Arson, murder… It made for a damn tight knot and a very short length of rope.
He lifted his beer bottle in a toast. “To my new employees. May you make me lots of money.” He ejected the DVD from the player
and slid it into a paper jacket. Through the beauty of streaming video, Eric the Brain would soon know his dick was in a sling.
He smacked a kiss on the disk. “All of you,” he murmured, “are mine.”
• • •
Monday, September 20, 2:15 a.m.
Eric opened his living room window and let the breeze cool his overheated skin. It would be dawn soon. But he doubted the morning light would produce any new options. He stared at the fire he’d lit in his fireplace. The dancing flames sickened him.
Mocked him. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
Twenty-four hours ago everything had been golden. He’d been poised to do something great. Something that would evoke conversation. For once he was going to make a difference, like Joel was always doing. I was going to change people’s lives.
He laughed bitterly. That he had done. His life, the lives of the others… They’d never be the same.
What had she been doing there? He gritted his teeth. Stop asking. The answer was the same as it was the first hundred times he’d asked. Wrong place, wrong time.
What the hell was I thinking? I shouldn’t have listened to Joel. I shouldn’t have cared about his damn wetlands. He’s going to talk. He’ll ruin everything.
He’s going to ruin my life. I never should have let him leave.
But he had. They’d all showered, washing the scent of the fire from their skin as best they could. Then the others had left. Maintain your normal routine, he’d told them. Go home. Act naturally. Go to class today like nothing happened. So they’d gone and now his apartment was empty, silent save the crackling of the flames.
He’d started the fire in the fireplace to mask the smell they’d brought back from the condo. Now he could say the odor of stale smoke was from his fireplace, should anyone notice or think to ask.
You mean, if we get caught. Which, Eric thought firmly, was unlikely. Nobody had seen them. He’d cut the camera feed himself. Hacking into the construction company’s computer-controlled surveillance system had been child’s play. Rankin and Sons had automated everything so they could cut back on manpower. Mistake number one.